Rushdie, Kunzru, Jaipur and the wrath of the forces of good

Penguin invited me for their 25th anniversary bash at the Jaipur Literature Festival. I didn’t go because they were not putting me up. I would have liked to read some of my old poems between mouthfuls of single malt.

As it turned out I could not strike this blow for literature and freedom of expression. But no one took their pants off and twirled them over their heads in sympathy. Worse, no one even noticed I was not at Diggy Palace, the new commando headquarters of literature in the world.

But not so the non-event around Salman Rushdie. The bleeding heart liberals and bra-burning literary radicals who are shedding tears and almost daring to drink themselves to death on free booze believe Rushdie’s decision not to attend DSC — the company that puts up the money for Jaipur and barely gets a nod of acknowledgement in return — festival is a blow for democracy and freedom of speech. They are shocked the Indian State did not stand up for Rushdie against the hirsute forces of evil.

The assumption here, of course, is that the State normally represents all that is good in the people of this country. This is a naive assumption, but we won’t question it. Because in this case, the government did not ban Rushdie from visiting the country of his origin, despite the possibility that his presence might trigger a riot.

What they did say, though, through the agencies of the Rajasthan and Maharashtra police was that Rushdie might be bumped off by professional assassins.

This might be a well furbished lie with the back office boys in the home ministry preparing vague sketches of the assassins just in case William Darlymple asked for them in the name of Right To Information.

But it is just as possible that there are assassins hush-footing the back alleys of Diggy Palace despite the threat that a high concentration of literature might pose them: leaders of the Muslim community had earlier stated they wouldn’t welcome Rushdie because he couldn’t open his mouth without his tongue uttering words that offended their ever-fragile faith.

Rushdie clearly is not just a literary fiend, he is more: he is a law and order problem. Given that, it is just possible that a potential assassin or two is always at hand.

In the event, Rushdie has chosen not to attend the literary orgy. It is his decision, not the State’s. Freedom of speech has got everything to gain from spared riots, and Rushdie’s own survival.

So forgive me if I can’t figure out what all the breast beating by Rushdie champions at the DSC festival is all about.

I have a question for them. A couple of years ago, when Bal Thackeray’s Shiva Sena forced the Bombay University to remove a Rohinton Mistry text that heaped scorn on the Sena, their voices were muted. A couple of mass petitions did the rounds on the Net. That was about it. Bombay is a crowded city; but if the champions wanted, they could have found a toe hold at Marine Drive or Azad Maidan and read passages from the banned text. Or distributed photocopies of the passage in question.

Or again, when an artist like M F Husain who exiled himself from India because the State was not ready to guarantee him protection from the threats of the Hindu right wing, the champions of democracy did not believe freedom of speech was all that endangered; a little, may be, but not enough to make a show of it, and pressure the government to say that art is more important than votes or blood shed on the streets.

When James Laine (Hindu King in Islamic India) cast aspersions on Shivaji’s parentage, and the Hindu right wing banned the book, no one read the passages out in market squares to publicise the contraband.

Or the recent controversy over A K Ramanujan’s essay (Three Hundred Ramayanas: Fives Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation) where he mentions the possibility of Sita being Ravan’s daughter. Did we see any pitched battle being waged by literature lovers when some Delhi University professors succeeded in removing the essay from the BA syllabus?

The DSC festival where Hari Kunzru and others plotted at protests against Rushdie’s voluntary absence as if this was the greatest mishap in literary history is laughable if only because they have chosen one of the safest forums for the battle: Diggy Palace, surrounded by the middle class literary masses slightly overcome by the occasion and hoping that they are part of something very big, maybe Oprah. These are the very people who will vanish when the real enemy is at the gates.

The actual test for literature is outside Diggy Palace, far beyond the ramparts of Jaipur Fort and DSC largesse. How about getting off the plane at Srinagar, standing in the town square and reading passages from The Satanic Verses? In the process, some idiot might cut you down with an AK-47, but what could be braver and better than dying for the words you believe in? Or better still, why not sacrifice one’s bleeding, agonised word-hungry soul for the freedom of speech in Kashmir, where if you throw a word at the State, you gets bullets in your mouth in return?

The hypocrisy and crocodile tears of the literary bourgeoisie is one thing, the crass exploitation of iconology that Rushdie offers as free publicity is quite another. The PR guys who run the gig at Jaipur and who now appear on TV themselves as litterateurs of sorts knew very well what inviting someone like Rushdie must entail: controversy and international publicity. That is marketing, Comrade, not literature. Makes sense considering the times we live in.

And all that heat and dust and the empty sounds generated from some rooms in an unlikely place called Diggy Palace! You bet there had to be palace in the middle of all that intrigue.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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CP Surendran is a journalist and columnist. He is a senior editor at The Times of India and is based in Delhi. Surendran is also the author of four volumes of poetry: Gemini II ( Penguin Viking), Posthumous Poems (Penguin), Canaries on the Moon (Yeti) and Portraits of the Space We Occupy ( Harper Collins). His poems have been widely anthologized in India and abroad. His first novel was the critically acclaimed An Iron Harvest. His second novel, Lost&Found, is due for release in October.

CP Surendran is a journalist and columnist. He is a senior editor at The Times of India and is based in Delhi. Surendran is also the author of four volumes. . .